MOSCOW, September 15 (RIA Novosti) - Russian and U.S. experts accompanied by Azerbaijani officials will visit the Gabala radar in Azerbaijan on Tuesday to consider the use of the radar for monitoring, a senior Russian military official said.
"Following three months of work, meetings and briefings where various proposals were considered, we will proceed to action on September 18," Major-General Alexander Yakushin, first deputy chief of the Russian Space Troops, said on Saturday.
He said the major goal of the visit to the Gabala radar Russia leases from Azerbaijan would be to demonstrate to U.S. officials that the radar could be used jointly for detecting possible Iranian missile launches.
"We could show that the radar could be used for monitoring exactly in the southern direction," the Russian Space Troops official said.
The United States said in January it was planning to deploy components of its global antimissile defense system in the Czech Republic and Poland to avert possible strikes from "rogue states," such as Iran and North Korea.
But Russia, already unnerved by NATO expansion to former Warsaw Pact member states, has condemned the plans as a threat to national security and a destabilizing factor for Europe. Moscow warned that its response would be commensurate and effective.
At the G8 summit in June, President Vladimir Putin offered the U.S. the use of the Gabala radar station as a compromise solution in the ongoing dispute. The radar, located near the town of Minchegaur, 120 kilometers (75 miles) from the capital Baku, was leased to Russia for 10 years in 2002.
The U.S. delegation will include ten high-ranking officials for missile defense from the Department of Defense, radar experts and representatives of the U.S. embassy in Azerbaijan.
Russian Ambassador to Azerbaijan Vasily Istratov said on Thursday that the Russian and U.S. defense and foreign ministers would discuss the joint use of Gabala in October.
The radar station has been operational since early 1985. With a range of 6,000 kilometers (3,700 miles), it is the most powerful in the region and can detect any missile launches in Asia, the Middle East and parts of Africa.
